Design for Service

Tenzin Shenyen on Things You Can’t Design

To kick off the final day of the 2014 Service Design Global Conference in Stockholm the organizers invited a Tibetan Buddhist monk named Tenzin Shenyen to provide inspiration. His slides are an interesting exercise in meandering reflection rather than straightforward narrative. He hoped that they would simply wash over the audience.

His stories helped the audience to recall that design isn’t always a conscious activity and even though we’re designing the world there are aspects we can’t anticipate. It’s an act of humility to admit that we can’t design everything.